about which I\u2019ve also written<\/a>), there exist several levels of reality beyond the ordinary. Humanity\u2019s purpose is to penetrate and appreciate them, and to understand them a bit. Not too much, because each level of reality has many aspects beyond them in both directions, more and less obvious. <\/p>\nOpening up this seemingly open-ended series of levels is one of our destinies, while another one is exploiting or applying whatever we open up. The pitfall is to think that we fully understand when in fact many mysteries remain, both on lower dimensions and higher ones, as well as at our more familiar dimensional level. <\/p>\n
I use the term \u201cdimensionality\u201d to describe existence in terms of what dimension they reflect. Most of the world is thought about in terms of three dimensions\u2014length, breadth (or width), and height (or depth). We can indicate how long, how wide, and how tall with our hands. Not so easy is indicating how it grew or diminished, much less died. That is to say, time does not have spatial coordinates. Yet that\u2019s all we have as we live in three dimensions: Einstein supposed that time could be represented as another spatial dimension, though he knew it was subjective. <\/p>\n
He knew about mind, subjectivity, but did not say it could also be considered a dimension because there were too many ways it was different from space. It\u2019s less different from time. And I\u2019m suggesting that mind can be represented as a dimension, too\u2014the 5th dimension.<\/p>\n
But raw mind only notices events. Animals have varying degrees of mind, though few or no animal minds think about mind itself. I assign another 6th dimension to that. That\u2019s what most people do. The 6th dimension thinks about possibilities, could, should, would\u2014in grammar it\u2019s called the \u201csubjunctive tense.\u201d <\/p>\n
But thinking about the subjunctive and other ways mind works takes it up to a 7th dimension! This involves philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, etc. Higher mind includes music, art, social network preferences, etc.\u2014other categories that rely more on intuition than cognition. <\/p>\n
At the 8th dimension what\u2019s called mysticism becomes apparent. Admittedly, some weak intuitions about there being God or higher dimensions begins to occur at the 6th dimension and gets stronger at the 7th\u2014and versions of mysticism are read about and practiced at lower dimensions. The apprehension that there are higher dimensions or perceptions of Heavenly Hosts or Levels of God-Stuff goes on and on to much higher dimensions. <\/p>\n
Paradox also appears as sort-of normal. There was a cartoon on page 24 of the January 30, 2017 New Yorker where God is pictured as a standard bearded old man in a gown saying to an angel or someone in Heaven, \u201cLook, if I have to explain the meaning of existence, it isn\u2019t funny.\u201d I like this because there are many overlapping dimensions including humor, paradox, and so forth at higher dimensions. The cartoon caption is telling because indeed it might well be true, at least to some degree.<\/p>\n
The idea of \u201cmeaning\u201d is powerfully subjective, though. That the meaning in the author\u2019s mind will be the only \u201ccorrect\u201d one flies in the face of individual interpretation. Some people cannot \u201cget\u201d how there can be several possible \u201canswers\u201d or \u201cinterpretations.\u201d Some postmodernist critics or philosophers note this, too. The author\u2019s interpretation of anything may not be the only one, nor even the most evocative one, the one that brings you closer to the intention of the cartoonist or author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This blog has been inactive for a few months as we\u2019ve been moving from Texas to California. We have reached an age where we need the help of our daughter\u2019s family, and, indeed, more of us may well be able to achieve more of what we aim for. Meanwhile, our goals and aspirations have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,35,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-mind-spectrums","category-spirituality-and-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2576,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions\/2576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}